New Trends in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
J.UCS Special Issue
Rocael Hernández Rizzardini
(Universidad Galileo, Guatemala
roc@galileo.edu)
António Moreira Teixeira
(Universidade Aberta, Portugal
Antonio.Teixeira@uab.pt)
Carlos Alario-Hoyos
(Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
calario@it.uc3m.es)
Héctor R. Amado-Salvatierra
(Universidad Galileo, Guatemala
hr_amado@galileo.edu)
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are currently a popular
phenomenon in the online learning world. Today many institutions offer
MOOCs. This phenomenon has not only created a new trend in online
education, it also has been adopted by a number of institutions around
the world, allowing spaces for research in pedagogical, technological
and organizational aspects. MOOCs have been able, on the one hand, to
modernize higher education institutions, making them rethink their
strategy on virtual and blended education, and, on the other hand, to
enrich research in educational technology, allowing the collection and
analysis of large amounts of data. In order to capture these
innovations, this special issue focuses on new trends in MOOCs from a
research perspective, including key topics, such as learning
analytics, integration of cloud services, implementation of
collaborative learning activities, or support to self-regulated
learning, among others.
We would like to thank all the reviewers who contributed to
selecting the accepted articles and improving their quality through
their comments. We would also like to thank all the authors who
submitted papers to this special issue, and whose work is of relevance
to advancing research in the field of MOOCs. A total of 7 articles
have been selected with authors from 7 countries: Spain, United
Kingdom, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, and Austria. This
reflects the multiculturalism and global interest that research in the
field of MOOCs is having in recent years.
It is worth noting that the seed of this special issue was the
International Conference MOOC-Maker 2017, held in Antigua (Guatemala)
in November 2017, with the support and co-funding of the European
Commission through the Erasmus+ programme. This special issue had an
open call for anyone with interest in the field of MOOCs, but it is
relevant to mention that a personal invitation was sent to encourage
submissions from authors of the three best papers of the
aforementioned conference.
The paper "A Study of Learning-by-Doing in MOOCs through the Integration of
Third-Party External Tools: Comparison of Synchronous and Asynchronous
Running Modes" by Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Iria Estévez-Ayres, Jesú;s
M. Gallego-Romero, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Carmen Fernández-Panadero,
Raquel M. Crespo-García, Florina Almenares, María Blanca Ibáñez, Julio
Villena-Román, Jorge Ruiz-Magaña and Jorge Blasco presents an example
of the integration of a software development tool, called Codeboard,
in three MOOCs which serve as an introduction to programming with
Java, analyzing the effect this tool has on learners' interaction
and engagement when running the MOOCs in synchronous
(instructor-paced) or asynchronous (self-paced) modes.
The paper "Sustaining Continuous Collaborative Learning Flows in
MOOCs: Orchestration Agent Approach" by Ishari Amarasinghe, Davinia
Hernández-Leo, Kalpani Manathunga and Anders Jonsson provides a
classification of MOOC participants based on their behavior in a
structured collaborative learning space, proposing also the design of
an intelligent agent to address a set of requirements for new
technological interventions to orchestrate collaborative learning
flows in MOOCs, and a study of its use.
The paper "An Approach to Build in situ Models for the Prediction of
the Decrease of Academic Engagement Indicators in Massive Open Online
Courses" by Miguel L. Bote-Lorenzo and Eduardo Gómez-Sánchez proposes
an approach to build in situ prediction models using information
available in an ongoing MOOC, deriving models to predict the decrease
of three indicators that quantify the engagement of learners with the
main tasks typically proposed in a MOOC: watching lectures, solving
exercises, and submitting assignments.
The paper "Analysis of Behavioral Intention to Use Cloud-Based Tools
in a MOOC: A Technology Acceptance Model Approach" by Miguel Morales
Chan, Roberto Barchino Plata, Jose Amelio Medina, Carlos Alario-Hoyos,
Rocael Hernández Rizzardini and Mónica de la Roca evaluates the
behavioral intention to use cloud-based tools in MOOC context,
exploring the factors that influence this intention based on extended
technology of acceptance model (TAM), and reporting the findings of a
case study conducted on the edX platform with data collected from 133
learners.
The paper "Design of a Tool to Support Self-regulated Learning
Strategies in MOOCs" by Ronald Pérez-Álvarez, Jorge Maldonado-Mahauad
and Mar Pérez-Sanagustín presents the process for designing and
evaluating NoteMyProgress, a web application that complements MOOC
platforms and supports self-regulated learning strategies;
NoteMyProgress was used in three MOOCs offered in Coursera to collect
data for the evaluation of the web application.
The paper "Supporting Teachers in the Design and Implementation of
Group Formation Policies in MOOCs: A Case Study" by Luisa
Sanz-Martínez, Erkan Er, Yannis Dimitriadis, Alejandra Martínez-Monés
and Miguel L. Bote-Lorenzo focuses on supporting MOOC teachers in the
design and implementation of group formation policies when
implementing collaborative strategies in MOOCs, and presents a study
where two instruments were used to explore solutions to this problem:
a guide to support teachers during the planning of the group
formation, and a technological tool to help them implement the
collaborative groups designed and to monitor them.
Finally, the paper "User Behavioral Patterns and Early Dropouts
Detection: Improved Users Profiling through Analysis of Successive
offering of MOOCs" by Massimo Vitiello, Simon Walk, Denis Helic,
Vanessa Chang and Christian Gütl addresses the important problem of
dropouts in MOOCs, using information from the first run of a MOOC to
predict the behavior of the learners on a successive offering of the
same course, with the to identify learners at risk of not finishing
the MOOC.
Rocael Hernández Rizzardini
António Moreira Teixeira
Carlos Alario-Hoyos
Héctor R. Amado-Salvatierra
July 2018
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